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Oil After World War 1.2

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Oil was found at Masjed Soleyman in southeastern Iran on May 26, 1908, and three years later was piped down to a newly built refinery at Abadan on the Iranian side of the Shatt-Al-Arab, not many miles below Basra.1(Stephen, 1991) Its global importance eas immediately recognized, not just by the Admiralty in London, looking for new sources of supply for its oil-fired battleships, but in other European capitals as well leading to a brief British-German-Turkish skirmish for control of the pipeline at the start of World War 1.2(Wilfred, 2007) Oil was next found in the Persian Gulf, beginning with Bahrain in 1931; there were subsequent discoveries in Kuwait, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, the Trucial states, and Oman. By 1960 the smaller Gulf states were producing 15 percent of the world 's oil, with another 10 percent or so coming from Iraq and Iran.3(Longrigg, Oil in the Middle East) By 1970 this had risen to 30 percent.4(BP Statistical Review, 2006) The story of the discovery, exploitation, and importance of Middle Eastern oil has been told in many different ways, and from many different points of view. For some it has been a source of Western triumphalism as in the case of the Aramco story , in which brave Texas "pioneers" conquer the world 's last oil frontier.5(Wallace, 1971) For others, like the Arab novelist Abad Al-Rahman Munif, it is a tale of woe, as the lives of nomadic people are disrupted by the appearance of prisons and exploitative local officials.6(Cities of Salt, 1989)

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